To think you don’t get out of paying the bill because you don’t drink?

Honestly I think it’s fine for people to pay for what they had. Good friends (I know someone you didn’t know that well) would happily do this. Depends the difference also i think. If she had 3 cokes that came to £9 but you had a bottle of wine for £25, then you should pay more. Don’t think it’s about the alcohol, it’s about the cost difference. People have different situations - jobs, kids or no kids, mortgage free etc

I always pay for what I have eaten or drunk, and refuse to subsidise other people's drinks.

Gosh, there is just a lot of different ways and not only one is good.

she didn’t want to pay your alcohol and some might be ok with that, others find it annoying. It just seems that it annoyed you so she isn’t your cup of tea.

I think just leave it, don’t mention it, live with it it will be ok.

Huh ? I don’t drink either but she ought to pay for exactly what she had separately , then the remainder of the bill split between the rest of you 🤔
When I’ve been out for a meal the alcoholic drinks are always a lot more expensive than the soft drinks unless someone is ordering fancy mocktails , so she must’ve been guzzling loads of coke for it to be anywhere near the same price as the wine / cocktails / mixer drinks ?

Why would any restaurant employ a rude server? They are paid to do the job that they're doing and do it adequately.

Tipping was needed pre-NMW but then again, it was needed by many people in industries that weren't part of the custom. Charge should be built in at the start, charge customers what you want and let them decide if they want to pay for it.

I will tip (very well) where service has been really excellent, I don't and won't otherwise. There really is no argument for it when other services don't get awarded this discretionary payment. People feel compelled and pressurised to pay it, even when there is no or very little service and so the cycle continues.

I won't criticise them for doing that but I'm not interested in doing that myself.

What does a roast cheesecake taste like? You're not meaning a New York cheesecake?

But it seems the CF asked for only the alcohol to be taken off before the four-way split.

Literally maybe, according to OP.
But it’s quite strange to actually interpret that request so very literally, and even stranger to go ahead and do the split like that.

Whoever split the bill did it wrong.

It is reasonable to ask to pay separately. But it seems the CF asked for only the alcohol to be taken off before the four-way split. Of course OP could have refused, but perhaps in the moment didn't realise how much the CF had spent.

It wasn't small change: the CF got £7.50 off her drinks bill.

I agree there are at least two AIBUs here.

One. ....to think that the prices were so close that we might just as well have gone for a straight four-way split (debatable, but not crazy)

Two. ...to think that, whilst I'm happy to sub non-drinkers to a modest extent, she was taking the piss by expecting us to pay an extra £7.50, particularly as she wasn't willing to sub us even to a modest extent.. YANBU surely?

I've never been to a restaurant where they haven't accepted several different forms of payment as long as the overall amount is paid.

I have.

Christ, 3 cokes in a single sitting is like a week’s worth of recommended sugar. Probably far more unhealthy than a single alcoholic drink

There should be a very simple system whereby the kitchen receives it all as one order and you can just pay for your own meal and drinks at the end. No fuss.

There is? It's called "work it out yourself." Pretty much everywhere I've ever eaten out over the last few decades we've done it this way. Bill arrives for £100, person one ate £20 worth of food so pays £20, person 2 ate £30 worth so pays £30, people 3 and 4 ate £25 worth's each so pay that each (simplified example).

I've no idea why so many people seem to think this is so hard, inconvenient or awkward (or "sad" as the poster above has called it!), when it should just be the norm. You wouldn't subsidise other people's purchases in any other scenario - if you and your friend were both shopping and she bought an £80 coat and you a £100 one you wouldn't say "oh let's just pay £90 each".

It's not as if anyone carries personal calculators with them at all times that make it simple...oh wait, they do, all phones have this feature!

I've never been to a restaurant where they haven't accepted several different forms of payment as long as the overall amount is paid.

They asked not to pay for the alcohol we drank but happily allowed us to split their mock tail cost between the 5 of us.

But why didn’t you all just split the bill properly instead of seething for years about it?
I mean, you didn’t have to split the mocktail cost between 5…who worked that out?😅

Yanbu . I experienced something similar. Went out as a group of 5. Four of us had £15 worth of wine per person , the fifth person had 3 mocktails totalling £36. They asked not to pay for the alcohol we drank but happily allowed us to split their mock tail cost between the 5 of us.

it was a couple of years before the four us realised we were individually seething over it .

Sadly when we go out with this person we individually pay for what we have eaten and drank.

My partner doesn't drink at all, I like a glass of wine or a couple of beers sometimes.

I always pay for my own drinks, on our food shop and at bars, as it's not on him to buy me alcohol. He will do a round with our friends occasionally at the pub, and he covers wine on dates etc if we go to a restaurant, but generally when we go out with friends we each pay for what we had.

Not at all.

For a start the voting is confusing as the OP puts two questions and we don’t know which one voters are answering.

‘AIBU to think you don’t get out of paying the bill because you don’t drink’
(most would vote yanbu to this I’d say)

or

‘to see if I would be U to tell my friend not to bring her along again’
(many would think think OP was unreasonable in this case as it is generally reasonable to ask to pay separately.)

Personally I think whoever split the bill was the one who messed up the calculations,
but it’s small change anyway in this particular case 🤷‍♀️

44% seem to think that.

Nobody thinks that though.

Whoever split the bill here made a mess of it 😁

Yes, we often do this too, but I was replying to pp who suggested every restaurant will accommodate paying using multiple cards. Many will, but not all.

I did think they would allow 3 people to pay separately, but this particular restaurant wouldn’t.

Whoever added up the bill made the mistake. It doesn't seem like it was intentionally done, best to calculate exactly what you had.
Lesson learnt..

With all the splitting of different bits of the bill you were doing, since there were only four of you, I should think it would have been quicker for you each to pay for exactly what you had.

I think you should have paid for what you had in that scenario because a coke isn’t exactly free.

You all sound very passive.
No one would get most people to eat something they didn't want.
As for paying for her cokes?
Sorry, but you are mugs.
She's just another CF, and you got stung.

I don't drink and splitting the food/drinks bill separately has never been a problem.

If it is a 2-4 person dinner and everyone has had a drink, I don't mind a simple split as some soft drinks or mocktails cost the same as a "proper" drink anyway, and what's a couple of quid between friends?

If we are a larger group and multiple alcoholic drinks or a couple of bottles of wine have been ordered, we split the food by number of people and I just pay my part plus my soft drinks. They split the alcohol between them.

It sounds like only the alcoholic drinks were taken off the bill, but if you are splitting by drinkers/non-drinkers, all drinks should be taken off the bill and paid for separately, IMO.

Too late to edit, but...it would have made sense if the non-drinker was designated driver. But she wasn't, I assume.